Geothermal is just as likely to run into legal challenges as other forms of underground energy recovery. The article below is part of ‘a special feature on the hazards and potential of geothermal energy’, featuring the habitat of Nevada’s tiny and endangered Dixie Valley toad.
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From his home office in Carson City, Nevada, Paul Schwering monitors an old gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota, approximately 1,000 miles away and a mile underground.
What was once the Homestake Gold Mine has been repurposed as a research station for enhanced geothermal systems, also known as engineered geothermal systems, a technology that could increase the United States’ geothermal power generating capacity 40-fold, says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Energy experts estimate that geothermal energy could contribute up to 10 percent of US electricity generation, but only if researchers can figure out how to make enhanced geothermal systems work on a large scale.
Enhanced geothermal systems have been called the “geothermal moonshot.”
“This is probably decades away,” James Faulds, the Nevada state geologist and director of Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, says.
The idea is simple, even if implementation is not: If the perfect conditions for geothermal energy production don’t exist, make them.
While a natural geothermal system has high heat, water, and permeability—the three ingredients needed to make electricity from the Earth’s energy—an enhanced or engineered geothermal system will often just be very hot. Humans must intervene to add water and permeability.
That starts with fracturing the rock, also known as “stimulating,” a process not unlike the oil and gas industry using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract oil and gas from shale rock.
That’s what Schwering is studying in South Dakota, at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, where researchers are using hydraulic fracturing to break apart crystalline rock deep underground. The researchers then inject water and observe what happens.
They are hoping to prove that it is possible to artificially create an underground system where water can be injected from the surface, flow through the broken rock—becoming heated in the process—and subsequently be pumped out at temperatures hot enough to generate electricity, as at geothermal plants built on naturally occurring geothermal systems.
The process is not without risks, most notably the possibility of induced seismicity, or earthquakes. Hydraulic fracturing can sometimes increase seismic or microseismic activity.
In 2017, an enhanced geothermal systems project in South Korea caused a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in Pohang, the largest-ever earthquake linked to an enhanced geothermal system. In that case, reinjected water activated a previously unknown fault line, triggering the earthquake. Dozens of people were injured and over 1,700 residents had to move into emergency housing.
Full article here.
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Special feature: Showdown in Dixie Valley
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
[…] The ‘geothermal moonshot’ | Tallbloke’s Talkshop (wordpress.com) […]
‘Energy experts estimate that geothermal energy could contribute up to 10 percent of US electricity generation, but only if researchers can figure out how to make enhanced geothermal systems work on a large scale.’
In the same sentence?
Let’s reverse the order:
“If researchers can figure out how to make enhanced geothermal systems work on a large scale, energy experts estimate that geothermal energy could contribute up to 10 percent of US electricity generation.”
I suppose if they could figure out how to get no-panel solar to work, they could provide up to 15 percent of US electricity generation.
What a fun game to play.
“This is probably decades away”
Then moonshot is too easy. How ’bout a Jovian Io shot?
From the bulletin of Atomized Scientists…
The article below is part of ‘a special feature on the hazards and potential of geothermal energy’, featuring the habitat of Nevada’s tiny and endangered Dixie Valley toad.
They give more attention to a “TOAD”, than they give to studying natural causes of climate change. They say climate change is “CHAOS”, they say “NO ONE KNOWS WHAT CAUSES ICE AGES TO START OR END”, they do not concern themselves with studying why, they attack any and all who even try to discuss natural causes of climate change. Then they brag that they can control future climate by removing one molecule of CO2 from ten thousand molecules of atmosphere.
Humans account for a small fraction of the CO2 added to the atmosphere every year and humans account for an even smaller fraction of the CO2 removed from the emissions by closing fossil fuel plants in Western Countries, because to build windmills and solar panels and batteries, more and more fossil fuel is used to mine and process and manufacture and transport everything involved. Closing a coal power plant in any western country requires the use of more and more fossil fuel in the countries that profit from doing everything we used to be able to accomplish when we had low cost, reliable, abundant power from fossil fuels, now we pay China, India and many other non western countries to develop their fossil fuels use and benefit. Countries in Europe are now bringing back coal because their natural gas from Russia has been greatly reduced.
Europe, western countries are promoting the rebuilding of the Soviet Union, Russia is taking over countries that used to be included, Europe financed much of that by buying food and fuel, Russia is taking back countries rich in food production, fossil fuel resources and even nuclear power. The western countries move to “Green Energy”, which is everything evil but not “Green” has put China and Russia in extremely powerful positions.
Coal is burned hot in new power plants and the particulates filtered out, modern coal is clean, much cleaner than the enabled War for Ukraine that was made possible by disastrous, attempted, conversion to green energy.
Just some things to think about.
The linked article notes:
Drawing hot water out and pumping cooler water back into a reservoir slowly but surely cools the overall system, even with a well-designed reinjection scheme.
“This is probably decades away” But… “any day now…”
different day same smell emanating from green energy
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .
Another green energy fail:
A potential energy source in Australia is set to remain untapped, with a geothermal power project in the far north of South Australia now closed. Energy company Geodynamics closed and remediated the sites of several test wells and generation plants in the Cooper Basin after deciding they were not financially viable.
So who spruiked it? Climate catastrophist Tim Flannery:
There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia’s economy for the best part of a century. They are not being fully exploited yet but the technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward…. But we’ve totally ignored the technologies that really, I think, have a lot of potential to do the job very cost effectively such as geothermal and solar thermal….
Green groups complain to a gullible ABC that all that geo-thermal projects need is a grant:
South Australia’s Conservation Council is keen to see more public investment in geothermal energy and other renewable energy sources. “There’s no doubt that a lot of these start-up, new sources of energy will require public funding to give them a start and, what we’ve found is, as soon as that happens the cost curve quickly reduces,” chief executive Craig Wilkins said.
In fact, Flannery (actually a Geodynamics shareholder) managed to help persuade the Rudd Government into giving Geodynamics a $90 million grant that’s now gone:
and other dud predictions, but I never got a sorry. But he got a great new gig from the Gillard Government – Climate Commissioner. UPDATE Remember how Flannery also managed to help persuade state governments to invest in a string of desalination plants, most since mothballed, after falsely predicting that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”? Currently Qld, NSW and Victoria have floods and SA is on “flood alert”.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/another-flannery-fail-geothermal-project-scrapped/news-story/331390329e1af9da27ec28a80163b45d
That was in 2016. I suggest a little caution about investing in such schemes.
Burning gas is a lot easier, and available now.
TUESDAY 08 NOVEMBER 2022
UK closes in on mega LNG deal with US to stave off blackout fears
The UK is set to finalise a major gas deal with the US after the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt this month.
Talks about a potential “energy security partnership” have reached their final stages, with the US planning to sell billions of cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to the UK over the coming year, according to The Telegraph.
An announcement could be made in the next couple of weeks.
https://www.cityam.com/uk-closes-in-on-mega-lng-deal-with-us-to-stave-off-blackout-fears/
“There’s no doubt that a lot of these start-up, new sources of energy will require public funding to give them a start”
Which means they can’t get private funding. He acts like the problem is that capital isn’t available. It is. The problem is investors won’t risk their own money on these schemes. Professional money managers say, “No,” but government says, “Yes.”
Government OPiuM.
Interesting, but everyone wants to do fracking geothermal. It’s so much easier to create a closed loop system. You use the same put your pipe in the ground, below the critical temperature of the fluid used, put in your generator, a radiator for cooling below the critical temp, and close the loop. No scale buildup, no blocking, and you have an output that can be sold. What’s so hard? The patents are over a hundred years old, and should be public domain by now.
Apollo was a race to land human on the Moon and return them safely- or a cold war PR stunt.
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[mod] off topic, Suggestions is available